Joerie, joerie, botter en brood,
as ek jou kry, slaat ek jou dood

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Wanneer verander die kleur van die lakmoespapiertjie?

Petrus,

Ons kan maar net hoop dat dinge soos hiérdie die mense kwaad genoeg maak. My tannie het my vertel dat die ou mense vroeër jare gesê het dat die funksie van die kerk is om die mense dom te hou en dié van die regering om hulle arm te hou. Nou het daar 'n belanghebbende bygekom (of was hy nog maar altyd daar sonder dat die ou mense dit besef het?)

(My vetmarkering en blou kleur in die berig.)


Bonuses for Diamond and Varley

Robert Peston | 10:45 UK time, Monday, 7 March 2011

Comments (205)

Barclays will publish its remuneration report this afternoon, ahead of the publication of its annual report - which is a slightly unusual demerger (as it were) of one bit of the annual report.

Presumably that's because it knows that the pay of the last chief executive, John Varley, and of the new one, Bob Diamond, is of some interest.

The headlines are these.

Bob Diamond received a bonus for his 2010 performance as head of Barclays' investment banking and wealth management operations of £6.5m, which consist of £1.8m in shares and a deferred award of £4.7m in shares and contingent capital (bonds that convert into shares in certain circumstances).

This comes on top of his salary of £250,000 per annum. He also received a few million pounds worth of shares from a long term incentive plan (I will be able to calculate the precise value of that when the remuneration report is available later today).

We can assume however that he pocketed somewhere in the order of £10m or so for 2010.

As for John Varley, he received a bonus of around £2m, according to sources, on top of his annual salary of £1.1m (again I will be able to confirm the detail later).

What to say about all this?

Well Mr Diamond appears to be pocketing a bit more than his peer at HSBC, Stuart Gulliver - who was also recently appointed as chief executive and whose recent rewards, of £6.2m in salary and bonus, was for his erstwhile role as investment banking boss.

Barclays will argue that Mr Diamond is only receiving the going rate for a job where he plainly has world class skills in a high-paying industry.

That said, the pay of both Mr Diamond and Mr Gulliver will infuriate those who argue that they are based on banks' unsustainably large profits - or excessive profits generated thanks to implicit taxpayer funding subsidies and rent extracted from the rest of us due to the opacity of their services and products (see my post on Adair Turner's recent analysis of this).

PS This is what a senior non-executive of Barclays told me about the bonus award to Mr Diamond:

"We could have been idealistic but we felt we had to be pragmatic; we had to swallow hard. What we've done won't be popular in the UK but I think it will eventually be seen as in the interest of the country."

How many of you think he's right?

1 comment:

  1. Soos wat ek die dinge om my met 'n houtoog en 'n plankbril bekyk, lyk dit maar asof almal kop in één mus is - hulle is mos van dieselfde makely.

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